Blue Demon

Blue Demon (2004)

1/2 (out of 4)

Incredibly horrid film has an interesting storyline but nothing gets done with it. The government creates some computer controlled Great White sharks to protect the shores from terrorists but the computer crashes and sets the sharks free to kill anyone they want. Dedee Pfeiffer plays the lead scientist and doesn't offer anything to the film and even Jeff Fahey is wasted. The film should have been a lot better but instead of focusing on the story the director goes all over the map by making everything so over the top that you can't take anything serious. Another problem is a stupid love story between two of the scientists. The CGI effects are amongst the worst I've ever seen and the handmade effects are even worst. Whatever you call the part of the shark that sticks up out of the water looks so incredibly fake. You can tell at times it's just a piece of cardboard or something to that nature.

Once a horror (or creature feature) fan has seen Jaws, they have seen the ultimate creature feature with a shark as the antagonist. Orca was awesome in places (and is not a shark, obviously), but Jaws is the epitome of a masterpiece creature feature. It stands comfortably alongside The Creature From The Black Lagoon, and represents some phenomenal film making skills.

This work, on the other hand, attempts to bring the "mad scientist" ploy into a cheap, slip-shod version of Jaws, attempting to class with the Invisible Man, Frankenstein, or even Bats. Sadly, it does not measure up, even to Bats.

There are multiple problems with this work. The main problem I found (and there ARE many) is the simple lack of kills, on screen or off. However, a close second is the painfully wretched writing, and an even closer third is the utter lack of acting talent featured within this flick. Fahey is the best here...what does THAT tell you? Further, dialog delivery is so plastic it goes to cement somewhere after the first 20 minutes. And speaking of plastic, once you get a load of these characters, you'll completely understand the tone of this review. These characters are less than one-dimensional! Nothing about them is believable. Every single aspect of this work breaks the suspension of belief trust any good movie must engender.

More importantly, I feel, is that the believability is utterly destroyed once the premise is introduced. Sharks are not capable of being "trained and taught" as featured in this work. That's why the government used dolphins in their earlier debauchery in the first two World Wars, so the whole thing falls apart and leaves the viewer hanging there in the conundrum of a wholly unbelievable story, terrible acting, and poorly done sharks.

SO poorly done were the sharks, in fact, that even the FINS, which is basically all you see except for 3 or 4 times total, look like shiny plastic triangles. They didn't even bother to paint these things to make them look as if they had any texture whatsoever! All in all? This was pretty sad and a huge disappointment, as I love creature features! Even straight-to-video films can be entertaining, but this didn't offer a single moment of entertainment. Every single aspect of this work breaks the suspension of belief trust any good movie must engender. This film fails on all levels and really isn't worth your time.

It rates a 0.4/10 from...

the Fiend :.

OK, i'm still watching this joke as i type, but GOOD LORD, it's bad, as in 'don't watch it' bad. some lightweight extreme reasons lead to me needing/wanting to watch this. i would have left this film alone and not bothered with a comment, until one scene that made me NEED(?)to review. i won't bother explaining the scene, if you've got this far you'll understand. perhaps if you're damned enough to be in the same position you'll understand, i only hope you'll never be! this has been a movie i've kept an eye on as a 'maybe' for a few weeks and now, it seems, is the time. i've been put here on my own since nobody will take on the task with me. understand this, it's free and i still had to ENDURE it on my own. i say again, i'm STILL watching the (lack of) beast! not even for free. OK? not even for free! unless you're weird and drinking at 5am!NOT EVEN FOR FREE!

The only good thing about Blue Demon is the opening, which actually was suspenseful and scary, and the one scene or even component of the movie that has any kind of professionalism. The rest of Blue Demon, on the other hand, is a massive waste of potential.

It's a very badly made movie for starters, too drably lit, too obviously shot with some unfocused and headache-inducing camera work and haphazardly edited. Worst of all were the special effects which were appallingly fake (not in a long time have I seen more artificial-looking sharks), especially the shark fins. The music is completely inappropriate and out of place, being too jazzy and upbeat when it should have been a more suspenseful and subdued approach. The script is very forced and like listening to gibberish, and the flow from one piece of dialogue to another is incredibly awkward and slow. It also tries to do far too much, with elements of horror, sci-fi and action, and executes all of them badly, with a seriously muddled sensation.

Blue Demon's horror elements are neither scary nor suspenseful, apart from the opening. The shark attacks are too few and too brief, and they are also incredibly predictable that getting any surprises out of them is impossible, the cheapness of the shark effects also don't help. The sci-fi elements strains credibility to the extreme, even for the term science-fiction. The logic lapses are enough to fill a big notebook, and it was like the writers made the sci-fi elements up on the spot. The action suffers from the worst of the editing, and suffers even further with the tedious pacing and indifferent and over-silly choreography. The story is very dull, with a lot of scenes that add little, and there wasn't anywhere near enough of it to sustain the running time.

Direction ranges from flat to incompetent, with seemingly no idea to generate any suspense or tension, instead playing it far too safe and by-the-numbers. The characters are annoying or bland stereotypes, and if you have a list in front of you with the most overused clichés in the genre written on it, it is more than likely that there will be ticks besides every cliché written down. The acting is very poor, with Jeff Fahey embarrassingly over-bearing and the rest of the acting is personality-deprived.

Overall, apart from the opening scene, which prevents it from being down there with the worst shark movies ever, this is pretty dire all round. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Whoo. This was an overly ambitious project considering its obviously LOW budget. Five super-sharks poised to deliver Jaws-like terror. The opening credits were wonderful. Wetting the appetite for a slick movie. To be fair, the production values are decent throughout, except for the cheesy shark fins. Computer animation is above par for such a low budget flick. Unfortunately Dan Grodnick doesn't have a clue about creating suspense or delivering scares. Although his actors for the most part tried to deliver credible performances, his characters have all the depth of those found in bad 80s porn movies. A few are so far over-the-top that they deflate any pretense of this being an actual horror movie. Played for humor, their scenes are tedious to an extreme. A blundering pop-jazz soundtrack adds to the annoyance factor. The action sequences are pathetic, no doubt due to the ambitious task of compositing the animated shark action with live actors on a shoestring budget, or choreographing the plastic shark fins. For adolescent fans interested in the T'N'A factor, it is non-existent here. There are some talented babes in very minor roles. Hopefully they'll turn up in better movies with more substantial roles.